January 17 – A Delta II rocket carrying a military GPS payload explodes, shortly after liftoff from Cape Canaveral.
February 22 – In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.
March 4 – U.S. President Bill Clinton bars federal funding for any research on human cloning.
July 4 – NASA's Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars.
a few days into the mission, not long after Pathfinder started gathering meteorological data, the spacecraft began experiencing total system resets, each resulting in losses of data. The press reported these failures in terms such as "software glitches" and "the computer was trying to do too many things at once".
October 15 NASA launches the Cassini–Huygens probe to Saturn.
Cassini–Huygens is a spacecraft mission studying the planet Saturn and its many natural satellites since 2004. Launched in the Titan probe, Huygens, entered and landed on the moon in 2005. The current end of mission plan is a 2017 Saturn impact.
Jan 20th - Comet Hale-Bopp crosses Mars' orbit
Mar 22nd - Comet Hale-Bopp Closest Approach to Earth (1.315 AU)
Apr 1st - Comet Hale-Bopp Perihelion (0.914 AU)
May 11 – IBM's Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, the first time a computer beats a chess World champion in a match.
June 7 – A computer user known as "_eci" publishes his Microsoft C source code on a Windows 95 and Windows NT exploit, which later becomes WinNuke.
June 25 A massive eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat leads to evacuation and eventual abandonment of the capital, Plymouth.
June 30 – Bloomsbury Publishing publish J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in London.
July 21 – On her 200th birthday, the fully restored USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides") sets sail for the first time in 116 years.
USS Constitution is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. Named by President George Washington after the Constitution of the United States of America, she is the world's oldest floating commissioned naval vessel.[Note 1] Launched in 1797, Constitution was one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794 and the third constructed. Joshua Humphreys designed the frigates to be the young Navy's capital ships, and so Constitution and her sisters were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period. Built in Boston, Massachusetts at Edmund Hartt's shipyard, her first duties with the newly formed United States Navy were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.
October 15 Andy Green sets the first supersonic land speed record for the ThrustSSC team. ThrustSSC goes through the flying mile course at Black Rock Desert, Nevada at an average speed of 763.035 mph.
Mother Teresa, Albanian missionary and humanitarian, dies (b. 1910)
Great Achievements and Greater Disasters
January 17 – A Delta II rocket carrying a military GPS payload explodes, shortly after liftoff from Cape Canaveral.
February 22 – In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.
March 4 – U.S. President Bill Clinton bars federal funding for any research on human cloning.
July 4 – NASA's Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars.
a few days into the mission, not long after Pathfinder started gathering meteorological data, the spacecraft began experiencing total system resets, each resulting in losses of data. The press reported these failures in terms such as "software glitches" and "the computer was trying to do too many things at once".
October 15 NASA launches the Cassini–Huygens probe to Saturn.
Cassini–Huygens is a spacecraft mission studying the planet Saturn and its many natural satellites since 2004. Launched in the Titan probe, Huygens, entered and landed on the moon in 2005. The current end of mission plan is a 2017 Saturn impact.
Jan 20th - Comet Hale-Bopp crosses Mars' orbit
Mar 22nd - Comet Hale-Bopp Closest Approach to Earth (1.315 AU)
Apr 1st - Comet Hale-Bopp Perihelion (0.914 AU)
May 11 – IBM's Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, the first time a computer beats a chess World champion in a match.
June 7 – A computer user known as "_eci" publishes his Microsoft C source code on a Windows 95 and Windows NT exploit, which later becomes WinNuke.
June 25 A massive eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat leads to evacuation and eventual abandonment of the capital, Plymouth.
June 30 – Bloomsbury Publishing publish J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in London.
July 21 – On her 200th birthday, the fully restored USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides") sets sail for the first time in 116 years.
USS Constitution is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. Named by President George Washington after the Constitution of the United States of America, she is the world's oldest floating commissioned naval vessel.[Note 1] Launched in 1797, Constitution was one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794 and the third constructed. Joshua Humphreys designed the frigates to be the young Navy's capital ships, and so Constitution and her sisters were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period. Built in Boston, Massachusetts at Edmund Hartt's shipyard, her first duties with the newly formed United States Navy were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.
October 15 Andy Green sets the first supersonic land speed record for the ThrustSSC team. ThrustSSC goes through the flying mile course at Black Rock Desert, Nevada at an average speed of 763.035 mph.
Mother Teresa, Albanian missionary and humanitarian, dies (b. 1910)
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